The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

Prof. Gates points out that there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the Atlantic. West Africans bear significant moral responsibility since they participated and enjoyed the financial rewards that came from it, as some West African political leaders have actually admitted in recent years. (Gates gives some examples which you won’t find mentioned anywhere else in the mainstream media.)

Gates points out that while there might be a theoretical case for slavery reparations, the practical problems are enormous — a point I have made to fellow historians for many years. Who deserves reparations? Who should pay them? The U.S. government? Or should individual states where slaveholding was lawful be held responsible? The people of Alaska never held slaves, and some states spent heavily in blood and treasure to fight the Civil War on the Union side.

As much as both Lincoln and modern Confederacy apologists try to say otherwise, the Civil War was ultimately about the suppression of slavery. Should Massachusetts pay as much as Alabama? Should Britain pay reparations? Spain? West African nations? True, none of the current governments of West Africa existed when slavery was ongoing, but the populations of those nations certainly benefited in a material sense. (Then there is a strong case that many of these populations suffered in a cultural sense from becoming focused on wars to take slaves, but how do you quantify that in dollars?)

Who deserves those reparations? Let me throw out one maddeningly complex example: Charles Langston, grandfather of poet Langston Hughes, was the son of a Virginia planter and a slave woman. Charles and his brother were given their freedom, and sent off to college. Would Langston’s descendants have a claim for reparations? Or would you say that they benefited from the system of slavery?

There are a few black Americans whose ancestors were never held as slaves in this country. (One of them has a rather important job now — something involving government housing and ’round the clock protection.) Does President Obama deserve a reparations check?

There are blacks who are wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of nearly all white Americans. Does Bill Cosby deserve a check? Does Oprah Winfrey? These are people who, in spite of great injustice done to their ancestors, have enjoyed great financial success.

Individual reparations make less and less sense the further we get from the crime. It was good that our government made reparations for the Japanese-American internment to those who were injured while they were still alive. The damage done became less and less dramatic in each subsequent generation, and the same is true for black Americans.

I’m aware that some reparations advocates are hoping that instead of individual payments, reparations would be a generalized expansion of the welfare state that will benefit black Americans disproportionately because black Americans are disproportionately poor. But this loses all the moral force of reparations for wrongs done, since this will become a program that helps many poor people whose ancestors were neither black nor slave (and indeed, might have slaveholding ancestors), at the expense of many American taxpayers whose ancestors were black slaves. Where’s the justice in that?

It’s important that people understand slavery so that we don’t let anything this evil happen again. I teach Western civilization at the College of Western Idaho. This year I have been lecturing on the Age of Exploration, and consequently, the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I am shocked at how many of my students managed to reach college with only a limited awareness of the slave trade. The looks on their faces as I explained loose pack vs. tight pack, and the conditions of slaves transported on the Middle Passage, told me that many of them had not a clue how bad it was.

And yet … they were even more surprised to find that more than a million Europeans were sold into Islamic slavery over roughly the same period, with Muslim slave-raiding operations into Ireland continuing as late as the 17th century. They were even more shocked to find out that Saudi Arabia did not formally abolish slavery until 1962 — and friends who spend time in that part of the world would emphasize the word “formally.”

There’s plenty of shame and horror to go around. Slavery has been the norm for most of human civilization, and while the horrors of the Middle Passage and the cane fields of the Western Hemisphere are remarkable, there is no shortage of horrors across the centuries. At a certain point we need to inform and educate, while recognizing that seeking reparations for crimes committed by persons now dead, against persons also now dead, will lead us to reparations claims against Italy for Caesar’s crimes in Gaul.

Clayton E. Cramer teaches history at the College of Western Idaho. His most recent book is My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill (2012). He is raising capital for a feature film about the Oberlin Rescue of 1858.

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1.
Anonymous

Without the slave trade bringing their ancestors to America several generations ago, most of today’s African-Americans would never have been born.

Slavery was a crime, but today’s generation owe their very lives to a debt their great-grandparents paid in advance.

Living African-Americans, even those in the lowest strata, are enormously better off economically than their collateral relatives in Africa are. That being the case, there is no demonstrable damage to hold whites liable for, and no legal case can be made for reparations. Speak with any lawyer about a grievance you believe you have; his first question will be, “What are your damages?” Living African-Americans have no economic damages when the appropriate comparison is made with the economic condition of Africans.

When discussing the practical issues, the question of responsibility falls at least as heavily on the slave-importer as on the slave-buyer. Because of this, Massachusetts and Rhode Island should pay half the cost of reparations. The fortunes that industrialized New England were built on slave importation.

I agree with your premise. However, isn’t wealth redistribution, bailouts and such all a form of “reparations” just by another name? Selective hiring, affirmative action quotas, failure to promote of non-”diverse” folks are the norm in S. Africa–a stifling racial climate. Is that how we are becoming?

But But, what about the “brothers”, ie. tribal chiefs of the Africans who became slaves to the nefarious white/European/American slavers? And the ditto Arab merchants. What is the “wisdom” that holds whites responsible for enslavement of black africans, but refuses to hold the elite members of their own race at least equally responsible for having profited from the sale of their “brethren” to those satanic whites.
Perhaps the white slavers were all members of that right-wing conspiracy we’ve been told about in recent times by some “compassionates” in the USA, and therefore responsible for all the woes of the world because of their heartlessness. BABY TALK in the modern “education” from the present day “elites”. With of course its effects in politics and general public discourse and actions.

“As much as both Lincoln and modern Confederacy apologists try to say otherwise, the Civil War was ultimately about the suppression of slavery.”

Nonsense. The Civil War was about the southern oligarchy wanting to stay the biggest fish in their pond by making the pond smaller. They did treason to the constitution, the nation, and the American Revolution to do it.

The first order goal was in response to the treason of the south, to maintain the relevance of the constitution and the revolution which it embodied. The Emancipation Proclamation was most immediately a means to that end, not the other way around.

There’s a reason Frederick Douglass wanted the south suppressed, and the constitution upheld, even if it meant parenthetically supporting Lincoln’s amendment to provide for the preservation of slavery where it existed–if it held the country together. It wasn’t because he was wrong, either.

BS – I can’t tell if you are under educated or perhaps over educated – either way you are wrong.

The War of Northern Aggression was about property rights – slaves being property at the time – and fully accepted as such prior to 1860. And about the rights of the states to self government, and the limited power of the federal government, and about the new territories entering the United States – it was much more complex than you outline in your comment. By the way – many of the unanswered questions and causes of the Civil War remain in play today – the 10th amendment for example.
There was no treason committed by the southern states – quite the inverse actually.

“The War of Northern Aggression was about property rights – slaves being property at the time – and fully accepted as such prior to 1860.”

So, your position is that, in the day, it was entirely an issue of constitutional theory, and not “so much” a moral one in the years leading up to the outbreak of war? So, what were the specifics of the constitutional breach that prompted, and indeed justified, the firing on Federal fortifications in Charleston? Fear of the future does not qualify. Neither then, nor now.

Your position is that slaves were fully accepted as property prior to 1860. (Let’s make that prior to the assault on Federal property in Charleston.) Really? Fully accepted by whom? If that’s the case, then why the assault in Charleston? What could possibly have been the justification if everyone or even the majority accepted slaves as property? A march is being stolen by eliding the suggestion that slaves were “fully” accepted. I seem to recall some evidence of questioning the fundamental morality of slavery in the Lincoln’s campaign (cf. The Cooper Union Address, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates). I even think that there’s evidence that Lincoln was far from alone in his thinking in this regard. There may even be some documentary evidence that southern political leaders knew of Lincoln and well understood the implications of his position, not to mention is election as President, in regard to the ultimate goals of the radical Republican faction.

You asked by what right Fort Sumter was fired upon. South Carolina had already seceded by that time. While the US government refused to acknowledge them, as far as South Carolina was concerned, it was a sovereign nation. Sumter stands in the center of Charleston harbor. Nothing gets in or out without passing it. Do you honestly think that any nation would allow another nation to hold such a position? There’s no need to overthink the subject.

“So, your position is that, in the day, it was entirely an issue of constitutional theory, and not “so much” a moral one in the years leading up to the outbreak of war? ”

Yes – This is exactly my position. Specifically, the federal government in 1860 violated both the 4th amendment (over property rights) and the 10th amendment (over states rights). I am not making any moral judgments here – I think we can all agree that slavery is morally wrong. I further state that the 4th and 10th amendments continue to be violated by the federal government today (google Kelo v. City of New London – to see a 4th amendment violation, 10th amendment center – to see various violations).

Fort Sumter in Charleston was fired upon by the United States of America. Fort Sumter at the time was a part of the sovereign state of South Carolina. I will gladly debate my position with you, but please be sure of your facts first.

“Your position is that slaves were fully accepted as property prior to 1860. (Let’s make that prior to the assault on Federal property in Charleston.) Really?”

I concede on this one – You can however find information about this in writings from the 1790s – slaves were considered property by the US government. From 1800-1860 there were moral misgivings on the ownership question. I do not have the specifics when the underground railroad began or when the attitudes began to change. But, you are correct everyone (most) did not believe in slave ownership by 1860.

Regardless,
Ft. Sumter was still sovereign territory of the Confederacy, being illegally occupied by norther forces. They were asked to leave several times and refused. The Confederacy even offered to pay the US govt for the fort.

The biggest single factor behind the desire of the south to seperate itself politically from the north, was the north’s use of the govt to force southernors to buy northern machine goods instead of cheaper and better quality Eurpean products. Additionally, the north was using govt to force the south to sell it’s cotton only to northern mills, when they could have gotten better prices by selling to Europe.

I must also point out that the Emancipation Proclamation only covered states in rebellion. Slaves in those states that had stayed in the union, were still slaves.

Because like it or not, slaves were considered property, so until the passage of the 13th Amendment, the only justification under the Constitution for freeing the slaves without compensation to the masters was to do it as an act of war. Lincoln just didn’t live long enough to see the Emancipation through to the end.

The Northern states’ slaves were freed with compensation to the “owners,” even if that just meant allowing them to be sold “down the river.” Had administrations preceding Lincoln’s enforced a similar buy-out (using land in the western territories or proceeds from the sale of same), our nation’s history could have been very different.

That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been a War Between the States; a successfully independent Confederacy’s low-tariff ports would still have stolen the economic thunder of Boston, New York and Philly (there’s your casus belli right there). But, without Reconstruction’s exploiting freed slaves’ votes to elect looter state legislatures, there’s no Jim Crow, etc.

Except, of course, for the Northern states’ Jim Crow laws, designed to keep freed slaves in the South and out of the Northern states and western territories (“Free Soil … For Free White Men”) without underwriting their education, etc.

This whirlwind reaped courtesy of your ancestors’ local Abolitionists, advocating slave uprisings and the slitting of white Southern throats since 18-something or other. Really, there were better alternatives to forced uncompensated emancipation (many practiced voluntarily by Tidewater Virginians, at their own expense).

This is very misleading. Yes, some slave owners were freeing their slaves during and right after the Revolution–but from 1800 onward, this manumission dries to a trickle, and from the 1820s onward, most slave states have laws prohibiting masters from freeing their slaves within the state. You want to free them? Take them somewhere else. The slave states weren’t particularly respecting of private property rights.

Except, of course, for the Northern states’ Jim Crow laws, designed to keep freed slaves in the South and out of the Northern states and western territories (“Free Soil … For Free White Men”) without underwriting their education, etc.

This is a bit misleading. Some of the Northern states did limit or prohibit free blacks from moving in. In some cases, the motives are as described (e.g., the Oregon Constitution just before the Civil War). But some of the Old Northwest states that pass these laws state that it is because masters are dumping old, disabled, and mentally ill slaves onto free states as a way of disposing of expenses that no longer provide any useful labor. The statisical evidence in my book Black Demographic Data, 1790-1860, demonstrates that this was pretty clearly actually the case.

This whirlwind reaped courtesy of your ancestors’ local Abolitionists, advocating slave uprisings and the slitting of white Southern throats since 18-something or other.

Many abolitionists actually discouraged this, especially in the period before 1831, because they saw it as counterproductive. Of course, one easy way to solve the problem of throat-slitting was to free your slaves. Virginia’s legislature actually briefly discussed this in the aftermath of Turner’s Rebellion (1831) but it wasn’t ever a serious possibility. Too many masters were prepared to risk slit throats rather than give up their property.

The Northern states’ slaves were freed with compensation to the “owners,” even if that just meant allowing them to be sold “down the river.”

Many Northern states that provided compensation to masters prohibited export of slaves from the state for this reason. This doesn’t mean that the law was always obeyed, but it isn’t quite as cynical as you make it sound.

Not sure where you got the idea that the North forced the South to only sell cotton to Northern mills. The South exported vast quantities of raw cotton to England, where it was made into cloth. Before the war started, the British merchants had the good sense to stock up, knowing that they would be unable to buy once the war started.

Even the majority of northernors felt that the south had every right to leave the union if they so wanted. It’s one of the reason’s why that war tore the nation apart. Families on both sides of the border were torn apart.

There is nothing in the constitution that forbids a state from leaving. Therefore secession is one of the powers left to the states.

Does anyone believe that the men who had just fought a war to free themselves from an oppressive govt, would write a constitution that forbad secession?

Remember what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independance:

… that when govt becomes abusive of these ends, it is the right of free men to absolve these bonds …

It really does amaze me. People who in one breath will tell you how bad and PC public education has become. Then in the next breath become mad when you tell them that what they learned in public school regarding the civil war is innaccurate.

The Underground Railroad went to Canada because the Constitution obligated all states to return persons “bound to service” in any other state to the state from which they fled. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was weak; the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was quite strong. Many states in the North had considerable argument about whether state personal liberty laws took precedence over the Fugitive Slave Act. Read about the trial of the Oberlin Rescuers for a bit more about the struggle on this.

“As much as both Lincoln and modern Confederacy apologists try to say otherwise, the Civil War was ultimately about the suppression of slavery.”

Nonsense. The Civil War was about the southern oligarchy wanting to stay the biggest fish in their pond by making the pond smaller. They did treason to the constitution, the nation, and the American Revolution to do it.

I’m not sure that we are disagreeing. Lincoln claimed that his goal was to save the Union, and that slavery wasn’t the reason for the war. Modern apologists for the Confederacy also claim that the war wasn’t about slavery (usually with some bizarre claim that the South was more libertarian than the North). But the Confederate states were quite explicit about why they were leaving–fear that their right to hold slaves was going to be interfered with by Lincoln. And Lincoln would not have had to fight the Civil War if the Confederacy didn’t leave over slavery.

“As much as both Lincoln and modern Confederacy apologists try to say otherwise, the Civil War was ultimately about the suppression of slavery.”

It is certain that anxiety about future steps taken to diminish slavery were central to the anxiety the South sought to address with treason, but it was far from the only reason, or even a greater reason than the sum of the rest of them. The heart of it is that the southern oligarchy wanted to address their angst about not being the biggest fish in their pond anymore by making their pond smaller.

There is a reason why Frederick Douglass wanted the union preserved even if it meant the success of Lincoln’s proposal to amend the constitution to preserve slavery where it existed.

In the end, the Emancipation Proclamation was means to the end of upholding the constitution, not the other way around.

I’m not sure how many Lincoln apologists are claiming that the Civil War was not about slavery, when it indubitably was. The anonymous comment may have some truth as far as it goes, but the reason southern leaders wanted to remain big fish was because of slavery–at no point in the years of debate leading up to the Civil War did they focus on any other issue, and when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued everyone on both sides understood it was now war to the knife–I don’t recall any Confederate leader saying, “Well, we’re not happy about this but tariffs and internal improvements are still the reason to fight on.”

Meanwhile tc has encapsulated one of the prime objections to reparations, namely that we’ve already had them for decades. Affirmative action as it has become (not as it was intended) certainly has brought tangible benefits to American blacks based on their race. Minority set-asides and preferences, university scholarships on a racial basis and the various expensive support programs for such students…there is an extensive list. If we’re going to discuss reparations why doesn’t this count?

A friend of mine’s family has been in Michigan for quite a while; three members of it were killed fighting for the Union. They may or may not have gone off to war vowing to free the slaves but that’s one of the things they fought and died for. Does my friend get a pass? My family didn’t get to the US before 1911 and 1917. Should my contribution thereby be lowered?

I don’t, however, have a problem with the idea per se that if your ancestors were oppressed by another group, irrespective of how long ago or whether you yourself can be said to be suffering from oppression, the oppressed group should still pay reparations. I’m Jewish. Jewish persecutution at the hands of Christians predates the European slave trade to the Americas by centuries. Can I wander by a black church and either get some money or a slip excusing me from my share of reparations because it balances out?

You mention Affirmative Action as reparations already being paid. There is also the disproportionate rate of black-on-white crime, which is approximately 38 times (yes, it’s that bad) the rate of white-on-black crime. Do we consider this theft of white-owned property and mayhem against whites to be further reparations, or has 145 years of it been so much more than enough to balance the scales such that blacks are now the ones who owe reparations? The only useful point about this kind of discussion is to get the message out to “useful idiot” whites that, unless they have personally committed racial wrongs, they have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.

We don’t need to be getting off subject but, it would be nice now that people are getting realistic about these reparations, 40 acres and a mule, and the rest of it and take the time to list ALL the reasons for the civil war instead of just cherry picking.

Also, I believe that anyone that really wants their 40 acres and a mule should read Sherman’s General Order 15 and then compare it to the treaties with the American Indians.We know how well that turned out.

As for me I’m a white guy descendant from white slaves that sewed saddles for the Confederacy.

Reparations for actual slavery is not what this is all about. You are white, therefore you get nothing. Ditto for all of the poor white people in the south, who are now just as guilty even though they never owned any slaves and in fact had to compete with the freed slaves for what little work was available.

If you open the question of the North’s motivations, you also have to consider that the Northern elite did not want to lose access to the vast natural resources of the South: timber, coal, iron ore, grazing land, agricultural land. After defeating the Confederacy, northern men flocked to the South and cheaply bought plantations. Over the subsequent 40 years, it became a routine fact of life in the devastated South that Northern money bought land, minerals and timber to be exploited for Northern profit. The environs of Thomasville, Georgia, were entirely converted to quail-hunting plantations for Northern industrialists.

Slavery came back on a massive scale in the 20th century – in the Soviet Union (see Alexander Solzhenitzyn’s Gulag Archipelago), and in all Communist countries, by Nazi Germany, as well as Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, etc.

If you want to learn about Black History (http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBblackHistory.asp) go here. Even most Blacks are not educated about their history, either that or they are playing non blacks for what they can get from them. It was never an ‘American’ government problem. It was mostly accidental or tied to business and entered politics through the DEMOCRATIC party and southern states. In any event, we don’t need “reparations” as BHO policies are establishing a ‘permanent’ reparation’ fund, of sorts. Much better than a one time payment that would be gone in a flash. This will last for generations. Sapping ‘whitey’ for imagined damages for decades to come. The GOP has, from the very beginning, been the advocate of Blacks. That is until the democrats (now socialists) began subsidizing “social justice” programs designed to lure the lazy and non productive of all classes and races into a life of hell on earth. Few things are as damaging as self pity and the belief you have no value. Which is what social programs do as a natural consequence of having “no expectations” of performance.

Regardless, the theory behind reparations is to repair economic damages that were done to ones ancestors and resulted in your being poorer today.
This theory doesn’t work with women precisely because the benefits went to men, who then passed those benefits on to their children, half of whom were women.

The idea that women today need to be compensated because someone was raped 200 years ago is even more laughable then the theory being put forth by these so called black leaders.

What I always find interesting is how the other Europeans involved in the trade seem to get a pass (to say nothing of the already mentioned Africans and Arabs). Check out Brazil…the Brits efforts in North America were strictly minor league compared to the Portuguese and the Spaniards!

Um, how about we focus on stamping out TODAY’s slavery? Human trafficking is destroying lives while its perpetrators pocket enormous profits. And how about prodding the (worthless) United Nations to wipe out de facto slavery in Muslim-dominated societies.

Since President Obama is white on his maternal side, he’ll have to PAY reparations, not receive them. If we extend the precedent which this will set, Europeans and Arbas will have to pay reparations to each other. If we extend it further, since my own ancestry is Irish, English, and Native American (those are the ones I’m sure about), I’ll have to pay raparations to myself.

Is there anyone who’s willing to pay reparations to me?? I could use some “reparations”. Maybe Egyptians, for 400 years of enslaving my people. Was not me, but hey, which one of the African-Americans(here we go again) was enslaved. Do you think I have a chance of getting something out of descendants of the Pharaohs.

I had a friend, a black second generation immigrant from Jamaica who shared certain musical tastes.

This did not include the Blues as he said it reminded him of slavery. When asked why a British person, born here should hold such a tenuous belief he, skipping the question, detailed the poverty of the sharecroppers and casual workers who originally produced the music in the Thirties.

What he conveniently missed was that the music of both white and black performers of the era bore remarkably similar structure and themes because both black and white shared the same fate if they happened to be poor.

In fact the music passed between cultures to and fro, sharing ideas, many European in origin as was the principle instrument, the guitar.

What I’m driving at is that this myth of only blacks suffering in the South is total hokum.

I recently watched a wonderful BBC documentary with a huge abundance of archive footage on American folk music and the traditions which are the bedrock of what we still hear today. The mingling of the races dismisses any idea of a strictly segregated society. And the similarity of the music confirms a common fate of poverty and a grinding existence.

The point I make is that certain black people love to wallow in victimhood, my friend included. In fact it eventually got so bad that I had to part company. Nothing was exempt, it was all about being black and therefore destined for second class status. No truth could penetrate the myths built in his head. Virtually every white person was a racist, whether overtly or subconsciously.

There are plenty here who share his impossible anger and within the tenets of ferocious multicultural ideology it grows.

In other words the myth has overtaken actuality and as such this idea of reparations takes a hold.

A cynic would call it money for nothing. A windfall based on a breeze which is blowing through western society that everything is our fault.

It isn’t is the simple answer. We did not create slavery but we certainly ended it. That for me, suffices.

I will give $100,000 to the first black that can prove to me that he/she has been enslaved or has directly suffered from the slavery in the 1850′s. I don’t expect ot loose the money.

If blacks would quit going on about somehting that has happened to all people in this world at some point, they would be much happier an able to progress. Are you aware that the word slave comes Slav? In other words, it was predominately visited on whits, by blacks.

The War of Northern Aggression had as much to do with slavery as the coming war has to do with health care.

What about the reparations due blacks from 50 years of indentured servitude to the Dem party and their false hopes and failed programs?

It is axiomatic that this will never happen; the ensuing civil war would be devastating. Furthermore, if Dems want reparations, a special fund set up and paid by the Dem party should be established since they were the original slave holders and supporters. Anyone who votes Dem should be taxed at 80% and those monies deposited into the reparations account.

When discussing the practical issues, the question of responsibility falls at least as heavily on the slave-importer as on the slave-buyer. Because of this, Massachusetts and Rhode Island should pay half the cost of reparations. The fortunes that industrialized New England were built on slave importation.

Dumb. The government of the nation wrote slavery into the constitution. It therefore sanctioned slavery. It is ultimately responsible. However, reparations should have been made within the first and possibly second generation after slavery. They weren’t; in fact, all the opposite. The moment for reparations for slavery is long gone. Indeed, reparations should have also been made by a government that allowed segregation; that moment too has past. The cultural legacy of the past thirty years can’t be attributed to any one party, as pervasive and toxic as it is. There can be no reparations except that finally, one day, people like those who read this blog will lose all power to affect culture or society.

Strictly speaking, this isn’t quite true. The Constitution never uses the word slave or slavery, probably because it was an embarrassment, and most of the Framers expected slavery to gradually disappear in a generation or two. (And then Eli Whitney took advantage of the patent clause of the new Constitution to create the cotton gin, and slavery was alive again.) Hence, the language of the Constitution refers to persons “bound to service” which included not just slaves, but also apprentices. Similarly, the language that prohibits shutting off slave imports before 1808 (Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 1) carefully uses “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” to avoid admitting what the subject matter is. Ditto for Art. I, sec. 2, cl. 3, which counts three fifths of “all other Persons” (meaning slaves, not free blacks).

The cultural and economic effects of the cotton gin are duly acknowledged, but Whitney’s inability to get any effective payment from those who immediately ripped off the design, drove him instead to the manufacture of guns, where he, finally, prospered.

I believe the reason was objection by some Northern states delegates to the constitutional convention that legitimization would follow any explicit mention of slavery in text of the Constitution. The 3/5ths clause whatever it’s moral failing was an act of compromise that enabled ratification and a Union born in original sin. Without it, the southern slave states would have lacked the Congressional franchise necessary to maintain slavery in the face of northern voting power; a point, I believe Gary Wills devoted a book to elucidating and a point to which southern delegates of the convention and politicians of time were keenly aware. Those same negotiations played out with every addition to the Union after (cf. the Missouri Compromise, and Jefferson’s response by comparing it to a “fire-bell in the night”).

I always liked Dick Gregory’s comment, that if you got reparations checks perfectly based on blood, there’d be a whole lot of black people disappointed to only get 50%– and a lot of white people startled to get 10%.

National Geographic’s The Human Family Tree did DNA analysis on a bunch of New Yorkers. One very, very buff black male model (but who, shockingly enough, turns out to be straight) got the surprise of his life: his male ancestors were Europeans.

LOL. Why should I care? Its your name on the line, not mine. I thought the whole point of blogging, rather than writing for a magazine was that you can control your own message. More counterfeit bs from this counterfeit “tea party” Republican apparatchik wurlitzer.

LOL. You think this fixes things? Has Gates publicly championed reparations before? Is he progressive? Do you think just because he’s black, he can stand in as your straw man for the left and for the issue of reparations. My goodness, its no wonder some people mistake this sort of rubbish as racism. Who could blame them, quacking and etcetera like a duck and all.

Prolly nothing more exhilerating than sitting up in your high chair, casting pearls of tolerance at the benighted anti-reparations folk below.

“Is he progressive?”

Since you’re too stupid to put two and two together – why yes, he is. His official application to an academic position (forget which one) was a self-pitying rant where he foamed at the mouth about white men “sitting in judgment” of him, plus various other whiny left wing tropes.

I think the most pragmatic solution is to offer reparations in the form of free repatriation to a destination of choice in Africa. How many takers will there be? None. American blacks love this country despite all the nonsense some among them spout. Those nonsensical complaints come from people who are angry and embarrassed at their lack of achievement. If I was suffering from the monumental oppression now or in the past that is sometimes put forward I would have left America just like that. Ironically, people have emigrated from other countries in the past for far less urgent reasons than black Americans like to put forward about the evilness of white supremacy. The whole issue of reparations has always been stupid on the face of it and was created by people with 3rd rate minds and championed by people with 4th rate minds.

We all are decended from African parents. I was born in Mexico City Mexico D.F. Where do we all put in our applications in?
I think I’m correct, in that the Presidents half black side belonged to the tribes that captured people and sold them into slavery. Should he not be made to pay us?

One problem: AG Eric Holder and Pres. Obama were law students of the original “reparationists”, the black professor Charles Ogletree, a veteran leftist, and Laurence Tribe, a white professor known for his far-out wacky legal theories that are bought by just as stupid liberal judges.

The poison is already in their systems re Holder and Obama. Also, Obama’s minister who he didn’t listen to despite sitting in his church for 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is also a “reparationist” activist. He has also been a Moslem, a marxist, and now just a good racist-baiter.

For information on this topic, go to http://www.newzeal.blogspot.com and you’ll see a whole series of columns on the Black Reparations movement and its black extremist and marxist convergence.